Dear all,


sorry for showing you this only now as I completely forgot about my promise. Anyway, if you wish to
learn more about valency patterns, here’s what you can do:


1) Look at Alexander’s Longman English Grammar, pp. 4—10 (The simple sentence) where you can find a
bunch of extra examples. There are, however, several things to bear in mind. Alexander
distinguishes between 5 basic clause patterns; Pattern 2 stands for the copular pattern (S + V + SP
/ S + V + A), Pattern 5 for the complex transitive one (S + V + DO + OP). For some reason, he does
not discuss the other complex transitive pattern S + V + DO + A. Mind you that Alexander uses the
term complement instead of Biber et al.’s subject/object predicative.


2) Study Dušková’s contrastive grammar of English and Czech (Mluvnice současné angličtiny na pozadí
češtiny, you can access the online version here https://mluvniceanglictiny.cz/12.2). As with
Alexander, the term complement is used instead of subject/object predicate. Again, different
grammar equals different categorization. Here, the part “Větné typy se slovesem sponovým” refers to
the pattern S + V + SC, while the rest is under “Větné typy se slovesem plnovýznamovým v činném
rodě”:

·         “Větné typy se slovesem intrantizivním” contains both intransitive S + V, and copular S +
V + A;

·          “Větný typ se slovesem monotranzitivním” refers to the good old S + V + O;

·         “Větný typ S-V-Oi-Od” talks about the ditransitive patter (S + V + IO + DO) and complex
transitive patterns (S + V + DO + OP / S + V + DO + A).


3) Practice the patterns on an extra exercise from Biber et al. (exercises 3 and 4).


I hope that these sources will help you understand the topic a little bit better. I’ll upload all
the materials in MS Teams; you can find them in our group’s files.


Cheers

David